FIRST Lady Grace Mugabe and the Zanu PF women’s league top leadership were locked in a crunch meeting late last night reportedly pouring over divisions that have rocked the ruling party arm and a petition demanding the expulsion of two senior members.
BY RICHARD CHIDZA/BLESSED MHLANGA
The meeting was confirmed by the league’s political commissar, Marble Chinomona, at the weekend.
“Yes, we are meeting tomorrow (Monday), but I do not have the agenda,” she told State media ast the weekend.
Insiders said the meeting was being held at Grace’s Mazowe farm, where two meetings were also held last month at which the idea of dispensing with Bulawayo Provincial Affairs minister Eunice Sandi-Moyo, who doubles as Grace’s deputy in the party, and women’s league treasurer Sarah Mahoka was made.
“It is not the national executive, but the top 10 members of the women’s league minus Mahoka, Sandi-Moyo and Tabetha Kanengoni-Malinga. They endorsed the decision to have Mahoka and Sandi-Moyo removed from their positions. The issue will be discussed tomorrow (today) when the league’s national executive, which includes provincial chairpersons, meets,” sources claimed.
Repeated efforts to get comment from the spokesperson Thokozile Mathuthu and other senior leaders, including Chinomona, were fruitless as their mobile phones were unreachable. Coincidentally, most of the league’s chairpersons were also unreachable last night.
A staffer at Zanu PF headquarters early yesterday told NewsDay the “meeting is underway, but is taking place somewhere else”.
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According to Zanu PF procedures, the women’s league national executive decision is subject to ratification by the ruling party’s politburo and central committee.
President Robert Mugabe’s wife serves as Zanu PF women’s league politburo secretary and has reportedly sanctioned Sandi-Moyo and Mahoka’s removal. The two were instrumental in Grace’s elevation to head one of the ruling party’s most powerful organs before the shocking fall-out.
Members of the Zanu PF women’s league last week hit the streets demanding the demotion and/or expulsion of Sandi-Moyo and Mahoka over allegations of undermining the First Lady and abuse of party funds respectively.
The demonstrations held on Thursday and Friday last week across the country made indications that Mahoka and Sandi-Moyo’s handlers in Zanu PF’s top echelons should also be disciplined.
Mashonaland West provincial chairperson Angeline Muchemeyi told NewsDay a consolidated petition against the two senior members had been prepared and would be presented to the top leadership. She, however, did not give a date.
Mahoka and Sandi-Moyo were leading figures in a faction of the ruling party known as G40 that has been pushing for the First Lady to take over from her ailing 93-year-old husband in the intriguing succession struggle bedevilling Zanu PF. The faction was involved in a brutal power scrap with Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, for long considered Mugabe’s heir apparent, but facing stiff resistance from G40, which also boasts of the likes of party commissar Saviour Kasukuwere and science and technology secretary Jonathan Moyo.
Moyo, in particular, has not hidden his disdain for Mnangagwa, opposing anything associated with the VP, who, however, continues to claim he does not have ambitions to take over from Mugabe.
